Since Forbes hired me in 1995 to write a legal column, I’ve taken advantage of the great freedom the magazine grants its staff, to pursue stories about everything from books to billionaires. I’ve chased South Africa’s first black billionaire through a Cape Town shopping mall while admirers flocked around him, climbed inside the hidden chamber in the home of an antiquarian arms and armor dealer atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, and sipped Chateau Latour with one of Picasso’s grandsons in the Venice art museum of French tycoon François Pinault. I’ve edited the magazine’s Lifestyle section and opinion pieces by the likes of John Bogle and Gordon Bethune. As deputy leadership editor, these days I mostly write about careers and corporate social responsibility. I got my job at Forbes through a brilliant libertarian economist, Susan Lee, whom I used to put on television at MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Before that I covered law and lawyers for journalistic stickler, harsh taskmaster and the best teacher a young reporter could have had, Steven Brill.

Doesn't Anyone Disagree With Warren Buffett About Taxes?

Warren Buffett used one of journalism’s most effective platforms this morning, the op-ed page of The New York Times, to renew his call for higher taxes on the rich. Buffett wants Congress to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for Americans with incomes of $500,000 and up (higher than Pres. Obama’s proposal of $250,000). He also wants to impose a minimum tax rate of 30% on incomes of $1 million to $10 million, and a 35% rate on incomes above that. Buffett’s argument in the Times piece: savvy investors will not pass up an opportunity to put their money into lucrative ventures just because their earnings will be taxed at a higher rate. He points to his own actions, back in the 1950s, when marginal rates on dividends reached 91%. “I sold securities and did pretty well,” he writes. The idea that higher tax rates will stifle investment and productivity, he says, is bunk. “The ultrarich, including me, will forever pursue investment opportunities.”

We’ve been waiting all day to read some negative commentary about Buffett’s proposals, but instead, there has been a stream of praise. Henry Blodget penned a piece on Yahoo Finance entitled, “Why Warren Buffett Is Right About Raising Taxes on the Rich.” Blodget writes that spending cuts are also necessary if the deficit is to be effectively tackled, but “we have to raise taxes” as well, and the highest-earning Americans are the best place to start. Not surprisingly, Eliot Spitzer agrees with Blodget. Writing on Slate, he says we should all “listen to the wisest man in America” and carry out his sensible tax plan.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that left-leaning commentators are cheering for Buffett. But you would think that a conservative outlet like The National Review would blast any tax-hike proposal. Instead the Review has a mild piece by Jim Geraghty that praises Buffett for noting that Pres. Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on families making $250,000 and up would ensnare some middle-income taxpayers in parts of the country where the cost of living is high. Geraghty also points out that many states already impose their own “millionaire” tax on people earning more than, say, $175,000 in Hawaii, where they pay an 11% state income tax rate or a 9.9% rate on income over $125,000 in Oregon. But that’s all Geraghty says. The Review, it seems, doesn’t think Buffett’s proposal is such a bad idea.

On the American Enterprise Institute’s blog, business and economics writer James Pethokoukis quibbles with Buffett’s calculations of potential revenue raised from taxes versus spending cuts. Buffett says that the government should be able to bring in 18.5% of G.D.P. through taxes, and spend 21%. Pethokoukis insists that the Congressional Budget Office has already said the government can raise 18.5% of G.D.P. by 2022 without raising rates, simply by waiting for the economy to recover. As an aside, he writes that Buffett’s proposed tax hike would be “anti growth,” and goes on to make the familiar conservative argument that spending cuts are more effective than tax hikes, and note that in a weak economy, it is unwise to raise taxes. Nothing new there.

Buffett also invites some mild criticism from Harvard economist and former Mitt Romney economic advisor Greg Mankiw, who writes on his Wall Street Journal blog that Buffett has failed to come clean about his own tax avoidance strategies. If Congress were to implement Buffett’s proposal, writes Mankiw, Buffett himself would be largely unaffected, for the following reasons: His company, Berkshire Hathaway, doesn’t pay dividends, so his investors, including himself, don’t immediately pay income tax on gains. Also because he’s a long-term investor, he rarely sells and realizes a taxable capital gain. Further, he gives so much to charity, he gets big deductions on the full market value of the stocks he gives away, most of which are unrealized and therefore untaxed capital gains. Finally, when he dies, his heirs will enjoy a stepped-up basis and the government will never collect any revenue from all those unrealized capital gains. Again, none of these points are new or surprising.

Perhaps the criticism is muted because this is not the first time Buffett has made a plea for raising taxes on the wealthy. He made his famous “Buffett Rule” proposal to raise the income tax on those making more than $1 million to 30%, early last year. Or maybe the lack of criticism today is a sign that Republicans in Congress and their counterparts in the media are accepting that to avoid the fiscal cliff, the government will have to raise taxes on someone.

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But the American People are no longer interested in being free individuals. Not the way that you are talking about. No one in America knows what is going on in their governments anymore. & at this point it’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we are used to being ignorant & subservient so much so that we no longer have the ability to be a source of power over tyranny.

Your principal is spot on though. After we collapse, we’ll have to go back to liberty & self government.

Right now we have abandoned healthy behavior so much that we usurp ourselves at every turn.

I still like what Rick Perry said “we need more people with skin in the game”. Mentally no one in America does. Hence this story.

Keep the faith Michael. Yours is the infinite truth. One that remains true through eternity. Theirs fades always.

I think that is a board and incorrect stereotype that the government always misuses resources. I know it’s popular these days but it’s simply not true.

First off our military is part of the government and I’d say they they do a pretty amazing job.

Second, the private sector misuses resources as well. I’ve you’ve ever worked for a large corporation you are aware of the amount of waste within the organization. Let’s not act like corporations are immune to misuse.

Lastly, corporations will never have my best interest involved. Corporations are out to make a profit and I don’t hold that against them but they will not be acting in the better good of the country. If they can shed costs they will ship jobs to another country. If they can increase their stock price with layoffs, they will do it. If they can increase revenue by making people work longer hours, they will.

Large corporations have an incredible amount of power as more and more merge. We need to have a balance of power and the only way to balance that is with a government that is large enough.

I don’t think spending cuts have been ignored. In the Opt-Ed piece Buffett talked about spending cuts. To me every time I hear a news report about tax raises the topic of spending cuts immediately follows it.

There is no limit to the abuse that the American People will take from their governments. “We the People” will literally roll over & die before we oppose anything. Whipped is who we are. & absolutely worthless to uphold freedom.

Um no his money is in Gates Tax Exempt Foundation and he put Billions away for his kids to run for which they will be paid handsomely.

Warren Buffett Is A Punk

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D) He lies about his kids. He often says his kids will get basically nothing from him. He says, nobody should win the “genetic lottery”. In fact, there’s a notorious story where one of his daughters had to buy a necklace from Zales Jewelry (which Buffett owns) on a layaway plan.

Meanwhile, Buffett has given each of his kids a charitable foundation with billions each to manage. If a foundation has $3bb in it, then something like $90mm can go to salaries. I think his kids will do fine with that kind of money.

You make a strong case rebutting what Buffett says about whether people care about taxes on investments. But Buffett’s main point in the op ed is that income above $500,000 should be taxed at a higher rate. I think he makes a forceful case.

If you think Elaine`s story is inconceivable…, last pay check my sisters girlfriend actually earned $6036 workin a 40 hours month from home and there friend’s mom`s neighbour did this for 7-months and got paid more than $6036 part time on-line. the advice available here..))>> bit40.cøm <<((.